


The Door

by cells55



Category: The Mindy Project
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-21
Updated: 2014-04-21
Packaged: 2018-01-20 07:11:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1501382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cells55/pseuds/cells55
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danny Castellano never thought it would bother him. <br/>One-shot angst-fest, very short. Set during TLAP.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Door

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first TMP fic (and my first fic at all in a very long time!) - hope you enjoy!

There was a time in his life when he longed to see a closed door. A quiet office, a little decorum, you know? There was a time, but that was now so long ago it seemed like a whole other person, a memory where you weren't sure if it was really you or if you're remembering a scene in a movie.

Now a closed door is almost physically painful, and he's fully aware of how ridiculous that is. Danny Castellano doesn't hurt because a door is closed. Because he's outside looking in. Danny Castellano should be pleased at the opportunity to finally get some work done. Pleased that there won't be any interruptions to discuss Rihanna's impact on youth drug culture, or Kate Middleton's wardrobe during her latest royal tour. Hell, Danny Castellano doesn't know who those two broads even are.

That's the trouble with letting people in. You try and keep your life orderly, you keep everything in its box, you go about your days getting from A to B. You do all these things so no one can cheat on you again, or abandon you to raise your kid brother when you're barely raised yourself. But the _minute_ you let a chink of light through the shutters, you're awake, you're seeing in technicolour, and maybe it won't be so bad if you have a couple friends.

If he hadn't let _her_ in, then he wouldn't have become friends, he wouldn't have started to see the sides of her that melted something inside him, he wouldn't have started to feel a warmth in his gut at just the sight of her, or the sound of her laughter. If he hadn't let her in, he wouldn't have felt so compelled to be near her. He wouldn't have felt like if he didn't just kiss her, right there and then on a goddamn airplane, if he didn't do something about those feelings they would actually, physically consume him, and there'd be nothing left except his reading glasses and a neatly folded sweater.

So he'd opened the floodgates, and it turned out that closing them again was difficult, painful, pushing against forces that were so much greater than him. The crack in her voice when she had begged him not to go was mirrored inside him, a tearing apart that he hadn't felt before, not even with Christina. It had been so unusual that it took him a couple days just to realise what it was that hurt so intensely. But even that wasn't enough to give him the voice he needed to actually admit that maybe, maybe, he had made a mistake.

And now here he was. Outside that closed door. Like always, he could drag up a smile, he could brush past it like it didn't matter. He'd become very good at that, over the years.

It did matter, though. The door mattered.

And...yeah...the woman behind it.


End file.
